Running long this week/weekend? Those miles are going to be a sizable chunk of your total weekly volume. Don’t waste ’em! Avoid a sloppy slog and help the time pass a little quicker by throwing in a 30-60 second surge at the end of every mile. Here are the details: (more…)
Not only does this workout share its name with one of my favorite covers of all-time, it also happens to be one of my favorite sessions to assign my athletes. In fact, if I were only allowed to use one interval—but could manipulate the intensity, recovery, and number of reps to suit my needs and desires—it’d be 3-minute repetitions. What makes them magic? Three-minute reps are short enough to keep your attention, long enough that you can’t fake your way through a set of them, and versatile enough to achieve different objectives depending on the day. Let me explain. (more…)
I first wrote about this hill workout several years ago for Competitor (now PodiumRunner) and you can dig into its background and some of its variations here. I use some version of this short-medium-long format for all of my athletes depending on who they are, what they’re training for, and where they are in a training block. This session is as much a mental challenge as it is a physical one and there’s probably a place for it in your program. Here are the key details: (more…)
As an athlete, the Mona Fartlek is one of my favorite workouts to do; as a coach, it’s one that I assign often throughout a training cycle. What I love about this session is that it’s efficient and versatile: it can be done anywhere and you can make it as hard or an easy as you need/want it to be (to be fair, the same can be said of most workouts, but I digress). It’s named after Steve Moneghetti, a four-time Olympian in the marathon for Australia, who ran this workout weekly for years (and still does, apparently). The pickups are short and swift and the recoveries in between are more of a steady float than a slow jog (though you manipulate either of those variables to suit your needs depending on your experience level or where you’re at in training). Start to finish, the Mona Fartlek takes 20 minutes to complete. I like to use this workout with athletes who are just getting back into speedwork after some time away from it—the reps are short enough to wrap their heads around—or as a good “get after it” session for my marathoners to break up the monotony of higher mileage and longer workouts. The Mona Fartlek can also serve as a good 20-minute benchmark session every 4-6 weeks by simply comparing your total distance and overall average pace (and heart rate and power, if you’re into those sorts of things) from one attempt to the next. (more…)
Tempo runs are a staple workout in many a runner’s training program and with good reason: they’re very effective at improving fitness, focus, discipline, and grit. They also tend to cause some of the most confusion. In general, a tempo run is defined as maintaining a steady effort for a prolonged period of time. How far and how fast should they be? It depends on who you ask. For ease of creating a common understanding here, we’re going to say your tempo runs should be 20-40 minutes worth of work at your half-marathon pace, i.e. a comfortably uncomfortable effort. Tempo runs tend to intimidate a lot of runners because of their stop-free nature, e.g. 3-8 miles at half-marathon pace is a popular prescription and anything but an easy assignment during a heavy training week. The Broken Tempo Run, which simply breaks a a traditional tempo run into smaller chunks—serves as a nice alternative, especially early in a training block when you’re just not that fit. I also find it to be a good option for runners, newbies and veterans alike, who have a hard time wrapping their heads around long workouts—taking a 30-60 second break every 5-15 minutes (n.b. I’m using 5:00 reps here for simplicity’s sake) is usually enough time to mentally regroup without affecting the intention of the workout. (more…)
In addition to writing this newsletter and producing its namesake podcast, I spend the rest of my working time coaching runners. Prior to writing the morning shakeout I spent six years at Competitor magazine/.com (now PodiumRunner) editing all the training content and writing a fair bit of it myself. The Workout of the Week was one of my favorite pieces to work on and a number of my entries still live on the site if you look back far enough. I’m going to resurrect a few of them here from time to time in a simple what/why/when/where format, in addition to featuring other workouts I’ve learned of and use with many of my own athletes that I haven’t written about elsewhere before. (more…)
